OK, so birds

[Tom]

I live on a 100 by 200 lot in a treed neighborhood in upstate NY (less so after the new neighbors clear cut their yard) and I want to load it up with landscaping and shelters to have nothing but birds to rest my eye on. What books or info do I want to start with?

[rwsaunders]

A local Audubon Society reserve is about 0.4mi down the road from me and my wife swears by their manual. She even went so far as to seek certification from them as a way to be more disciplined about planting and maintenance...fun stuff.

http://www.aswp.org/pages/beechwood

[thomas]

Well, you can start right now by putting out some bird feeders! Sunflower seed and suet works for here.

Find a local nursery (the tree and shrub kind) and visit them in the early spring and tell them what you want to do. They can recommend shrubs that attract birds. Big trees don't really have much to offer for the birds as far as food sources. Have fun!

[j44ke]

Birds eat a lot of insects so really you are landscaping both to grow food and to attract food - insects - to your yard. Shelter is also important so you will be better off with an appropriately untidy landscaping approach. Don’t dead head flowers. Let bushes overwinter. Avoid raking. Avoid mowing. Plant by height and interest. A thyme and sedge mixed lawn area (what we’ve planted in areas) will only grow 3-4” tall.

But the best attractor for birds is water. And water that makes sound is the best. A dependable source of water is golden for birds, and the only way they find it is by accident or by sound. If you can create a year round presence of water in your yard, that will go along way to building a steady population of regulars. Should be volume enough it doesn’t evaporate entirely, could have a float valve refill or a reservoir for a recirculating pump, should have a shallow section for small birds, and some form of drip in a pan or trickle over rocks that creates noise birds can hear. Doesn’t need to be a waterfall. Just a dribble. Birds will hear it.

Margaret Roach has a good smart blog that might be helpful. She takes a seasonal approach to gardening with an eye towards animal and birds attracting but also organic vegetables etc. And she has books too that cover the same topics.

https://awaytogarden.com/

I follow Hawthorne Valley’s blog from their Farmscape Ecology program. Very interesting conversation on native species and the relationships between plants and human activities and animals and insects and birds etc etc etc. Inevitably it all goes into the knowledge mix that helps understand what might work in a landscape project.

https://progressoftheseasons.wordpre...r/hvfarmscape/

Finally, almost everything you would do for butterflies benefits birds as well. So building a garden that helps butterflies will help birds too.

Native plants only! Lots of options. You won’t run out of things to plant.

[thollandpe]

One of the things that we do is leave standing deadwood in the yard for the insects and birds to have at.

Ditto with the “dead” lower branches on trees. Some of the bird favorites are a scruffy blue spruce and a lilac that are near the feeders. These give the birds cover and bunch of branches to perch on, so they act as staging areas. Another favorite is a gigantic rhododendron, this thing is dense AF and provides year round cover. Sometimes you can hear a whole flock inside and not see a single bird.

[ides1056]

Our local NPR station, WAMC, has a birding show featuring Rich Guthrie.

https://www.wamc.org/post/birding-rich-guthrie-1

[Mabouya]

But the best attractor for birds is water. And water that makes sound is the best. A dependable source of water is golden for birds, and the only way they find it is by accident or by sound. If you can create a year round presence of water in your yard, that will go along way to building a steady population of regulars.

Jorn, do you have water for them in the winter too? It takes quite a few watts to keep a decent sized birdbath from freezing when the temps drop below, say, 20* and I haven't been able to justify it to myself, even though I do have a heated bath that I could use.

I also wonder how far birds will go for water in the winter. My house is almost exactly halfway between a creek that almost never freezes, and the MO river, which obviously always runs, and it's almost exactly 1 mile each way "as the crow flies." I don't know if that's close enough for the guys who come to my feeder - it might be too far for the littler ones.

[j44ke]

Jorn, do you have water for them in the winter too? It takes quite a few watts to keep a decent sized birdbath from freezing when the temps drop below, say, 20* and I haven't been able to justify it to myself, even though I do have a heated bath that I could use.

I also wonder how far birds will go for water in the winter. My house is almost exactly halfway between a creek that almost never freezes, and the MO river, which obviously always runs, and it's almost exactly 1 mile each way "as the crow flies." I don't know if that's close enough for the guys who come to my feeder - it might be too far for the littler ones.

Good point. Down in Norfolk VA where my dad lives, he runs a dripper year 'round. Up here that's a good way to freeze your hose bib. We had a piece of carved granite we used as a bird bath in Amagansett. During the winter, I'd heat a kettle of water and take it out to melt the ice. By the time I'd poured the water into the birdbath, the ice was melted and the water was cool enough for the birds. I did it twice a day usually. The white throated sparrows were the primary benefactors in winter. The bath was on the ground under a bush. In summer it was the catbirds, but I just filled it manually since we were renters. Didn't want to start a mudpit with a dripper in the owners' garden.

Conveniently we now have a lot of water within a small distance, water that seems to somehow flow all winter. There is a very small creek within throwing distance from the bird feeders that runs enough there is open water most days. Quite a few birds use it, including pileated woodpeckers which is a bit comical. And then there is the creek further away. Plenty of birds there. Sometimes hundreds of goldfinches. But in more urban areas, water can be less available.

Birds will actually travel fairly far for water, but they have to know where it is. They don't seem able to go out of their way looking for water. More like they just stumble upon it while feeding, which is very routine driven. If you've ever set up a birdbath, you may have noticed that weeks can go by before any bird figures out it is there. Once they find it, it gets put into their routine. If I didn't have water in the bath in Amagansett first thing in the morning, the catbirds stood on the porch making noise.

I'd have to look at what is available for actual winters to know what to recommend. You could use a poultry water heater in a rock/concrete/stone birdbath, but then if the thing malfunctions or there's a power outage, you're likely to crack your nice birdbath when the water freezes. So I suspect some kind of molded plastic or resin bath with built-in heating would be better. And probably more efficient too as it wouldn't be working against the cooling factor of the bath material as much. And put it on the ground out of the wind to stabilize temps that way too, plus provide cover. Birds might bathe in it periodically, but mostly it is just going to be for drinking, so the volume can be lower as well.

[rwsaunders]

A mix of black and stripped sunflower seed for my feathered friends, suet for the woodpeckers, nuthatches and chickadees and .177 steel shot for the squirrels.

[mg2ride]

Habitat is great but if you want to see them you have to feed them. My wife and her family are birders. Her parents have a family small yard but feed/water them religiously. They see a large variety pretty much every day.

We have a large over grown yard with habitat in mind. Feed regularly but not to the degree her parents do. We see our fair share, but not nearly as many as them. However, we know as a fact we have a large multiple more activity than them and are blessed to know they are being raised all around us.

[Mabouya]

A mix of black and stripped sunflower seed for my feathered friends, suet for the woodpeckers, nuthatches and chickadees and .177 steel shot for the squirrels.

Sunflower seeds work best at my place too. They totally ignore millet.

As far as squirrels go, about 6 months ago I bit the bullet and bought two Broam Squirrel Buster Plus feeders. They aren't cheep [ ;) ], but they did solve my squirrel problem, and and have payed for themselves several times over in savings.

(pic is not mine)

https://bromebirdcare.com/squirrelbuster-plus/

[Tom]

We had a Cooper's or sharp-shinned working over the chipmunks until they were under control earlier this year. There's a big red tail that works down the tree line behind us, it is pretty funny to see the crows harassing it flying along it looking up going "Cut it out!" petulantly.

[j44ke]

We had squirrels molesting our suet feeders. Now we have a red-tailed hawk. I haven't seen a squirrel in weeks.

[echappist]

Saw my first rose-breasted grosbeak earlier this week. And if i'm not mistaken (I may very well be), I think I saw his mate as well. Hard to tell, as the suspected female grosbeak otherwise looks like a sparrow of some sort.

Also found an active nest in a small evergreen, and I'd like to know if someone could help me identify the species (singular or plural) responsible.

It's quite a small cup-shaped nest, and I'd suspect it's the nest of a house finch. The interesting thing is that one of the eggs doesn't look like the other three, and I wonder if there's brood parasitism going on. I don't recall seeing too many cowbirds around, but I may just have been careless. Anyone has suggestions on what bird(s) may be responsible here?

[j44ke]

Cowbird egg definitely. Note both the speckles and the rounded shape. You can help out by tossing it if you want. Otherwise the cowbird will hatch and push the other eggs out or the other nestlings. But usually the cowbird hatches first. Or let nature take its course. House finches were originally a bird of the western US but have moved eastward over the last 20-30 years, competing successfully with purple finches, chipping sparrows and juncos, and other birds for nest sites and habitat. Cowbirds are native US birds who moved eastward far longer ago but also expanded territory. So they deserve each other?

[ides1056]

Let's have a poll:

I vote ditch the cowbird egg.

[echappist]

Cowbird egg definitely. Note both the speckles and the rounded shape. You can help out by tossing it if you want. Otherwise the cowbird will hatch and push the other eggs out or the other nestlings. But usually the cowbird hatches first. Or let nature take its course. House finches were originally a bird of the western US but have moved eastward over the last 20-30 years, competing successfully with purple finches, chipping sparrows and juncos, and other birds for nest sites and habitat. Cowbirds are native US birds who moved eastward far longer ago but also expanded territory. So they deserve each other?

Thanks for the ID. In that case, I'll let nature sort it out then. I was really hoping that one egg wouldn't be a cowbird egg, but alas. At least it wasn't a house sparrow nest (though cowbird parasites in a house sparrow nest would be quite the karmic pairing).

Let's have a poll:

I vote ditch the cowbird egg.

Well, if the Migratory Bird Act weren't the law of the land, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Effing freeloaders. But alas, hands are figuratively tied

I just really hope that the cowbirds haven't gotten to the cardinal nest located in a similar evergreen across the street (I see the male cardinal constantly flying into and out of the foliage of this particular tree).

Some sneaky creatures the cowbirds are. I don't think i've seen them at all this year, but they've already left quite the mark. This particular nest was quite difficult to spot, too. I actually saw an abandoned one located next to it and was going to check that one out; instead, I accidentally came upon this active one. And to think that the cowbird observed all of this and executed its plan. I doubt if the one responsible is even within 10 miles of where I am.

[ides1056]

You are so right.

My apologies.

There's a local group that hunts coyotes with collared dogs. Makes me sick. Wrong of me to think to tip Nature's hand.

[j44ke]

Basic rule of bird nests is that if a person can find it, everyone else knows where it is.

[echappist]

Basic rule of bird nests is that if a person can find it, everyone else knows where it is.

And on that note, I found a robin's nest located in a not-so-dense shrub outside my kitchen window, located at 1.5 stories above ground. I saw signs of construction yesterday, but the nest is close to completion today. It would be a miracle if anything hatches though, as we often have squirrels and chipmunks in the general vicinity. Oh well.